6 comments to Close-Up (大寫特寫, 1990)

Close Up was my first Kiarostami film (I was lucky to see it in the theatre too), but I wasn’t particularly impressed by it then, feeling that it was all just a simple reenactment of a small but interesting story related to cinema. It’s only recently, when I revisited the film on DVD, that I realised how much nuances and themes it achieved. Do note that Kiarostami admitted in a DVD interview that the omission of sound in the meeting between Makhmalbaf and Sabzian was really due to faulty equipment and not something deliberate (a fortunate accident, I guess). If the film precedes the documentary/fiction interplay trend that is prevalent in world cinema nowadays, it may be the most simple (but not simplistic), naturalistic yet reflexive, and compassionate example of this trend. This blur of reality and fiction is accentuated by Kiarostami’s intervention in conceiving the project and his participation in scenes within the film; but while he never acknowledges this role directly, we as the audience don’t feel manipulated by the events (the trial scenes are apparently genuine) and the restaging of events.

There’s still a lot of Kiarostami that I haven’t experienced, and I’m pretty frustrated I’m going to skip the entire retrospective (no thanks to work and a pre-booked holiday trip)- his films, particularly his later experimental works require the patience and attention that you can only give in a cinema setting. I’m sure I would have been moved by Shirin if I saw it in the cinema rather than at home, although on the other hand I don’t think I’ll ever appreciate the very spare Five Dedicated to Ozu.

Just wondering, are they giving out mini essay booklets for Kiarostami/Vietnam retrospectives like they did previously for Antonioni/Bergman/Angelopoulos?

re: The Daydreamer
Which DVD are you referring to? It’s quite well documented in Criterion’s DVD and other discussions of the film that the soundtrack of that meeting scene is deliberately dropped out intermittently~

As for the trial scene, the questions raised by Kiarostami are asked after the the judge’s interrogation, and later edited together as if the director is asking the questions during the trial~ By the way, the Criterion DVD also features a documentary on Sabzian made a few years after this film, which I find very moving and shed more light on him~

It’s interesting that Kiarostami himself seems to be fond of confusing things and promoting people to have their own readings of his films~ If you read Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s book on the director, you’ll notice JR mentioned an instance (pp.28) when Kiarostami answered an audience’s erraneous question about film stock as though it is correct~ I guess it’s difficult to say how much of all these anecdotes are true, perhaps they are part of this reality/forgery game~

Yes, there is a little booklet for Kiarostami’s retrospective~ It contains a piece written by the critic 王瑞祺 (in both English and Chinese)~ A translated piece of David Bordwell’s writing on “Shirin”, and a translated interview taken from the book I mentioned above, and also short notes and credits for each film~

Oh damn, I’ll have to find some way/someone to sneak a booklet for me then :S

I’m referring to the Criterion DVD, but I do remember in the interview Kiarostami said it was really due to faulty equipment (memory playing tricks with me?). As for the trial, you mean Kiarostami asked the questions after the trial but within the court setting with the characters, and then edit it to make it as a seamless whole? Of course there’s manipulation throughout the film (that’s the whole point), but the way he stages and directs his characters makes it feel as natural as possible. Shabzian comes off in the documentary as a flawed and pitiful figure (although we have no idea how much of it is playing for the camera- the question of reality lingers on!), which makes Close Up even more a masterful film as it’s profoundly humanistic and not a little bit condescending. And I’m aware of Rosenbaum’s book but I feel I shouldn’t read it until I’ve seen more of his early works.

re: The Daydreamer
@21:00 of the interview on the CC disc, Kiarostami said that “I included up to the ‘Makh-’ and erased the rest, and decided to say that the sound had dropped out”~ As for the trial, you may take a look at this article~ I have no way to confirm its claims though~

Dropping out the sound is a clever move, since banal and irrelevant conversation would really spoil the emotional impact of the whole scene~

And yes, we’ll never know when does real-life end and acting begin (and vice versa), this may well be an intrinsic flaw of the documentary form that Kiarostami tries to reveal in this film and other films like “Homework”~